RSNO, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow
Michael Tumelty
Four stars
NOW that’s what I call a warm-up for the winter season. The RSNO’s annual Music at the Museum concert, which was presented on Friday and Saturday, has become an annual fixture. It’s a kind of early alert for the imminent winter season as well as a very different show in its own right. And I have to say I was a little disappointed to see quite so many empty seats on Friday: perhaps naively, I’ve come to think of this event as an automatic magnet. If that’s not the case, I wonder why?
Anyway, those who did make the effort were well-rewarded with a spectacular performance by Russian soprano Olga Pudova. Ye gods: what a voice. She starts to climb into the stratosphere where others have given up and reached for a comfy seat and an oxygen tank. Her very special quality, which she demonstrated consistently throughout pop arias (Caro nome and Una voce poco fa) was almost impossible to describe. She seemed to have the ability to detach her gobsmacking coloratura from gravity, and let it fly weightlessly and free. It was astonishing, all night. And then she topped it, heart-stoppingly, by bringing RSNO principal flautist Katherine Bryan out front, to form a living, breathing, desperately-intimate duet in the mad scene from Lucia di Lammermooor. Did you blink? Did you breathe? To hear two great musicians in such indivisible unity is beyond mere words.
Cristian Macelaru conducted, with chunky, idiomatic presentation, and the band roared through the Thieving Magpie, the Lone Ranger (no arguments after the conductor’s intro) and a swaggering, wine-fuelled Capriccio Italien.
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